Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

The problem was that Kennedy had taken recent Soviet bluster and propaganda all too seriously and built his understanding of US-Soviet relations around the Berlin question. This dramatically ratcheted up the apparent significance of the Cuban crisis, leading Kennedy to inform his closest advisers, on October 19th: ‘I don’t think we’ve got any satisfactory alternatives . . . Our problem is not merely Cuba but it is also Berlin. And when we recognize the importance of Berlin to Europe, and recognize the importance of our allies to us, that’s what has made this thing be a dilemma for these days. Otherwise, our answer would be quite easy.’ Three days earlier, as the Cuba crisis began,